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John Fowles: The Journals, Volume 2 edited by Charles Drazin

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"Living here has become rather like climbing a mountain with a corpse, a talking corpse, on one's back" - or so John Fowles felt about his wife Elizabeth and their domestic life together. It was only after she died, of course, that he realised how much he loved her. These are the journals of a man for whom celebrity didn't bring happiness. Rich and famous after the transatlantic success of his novels The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman, Fowles found that he hated the media, hated the dumbness of Americanisation and Hollywood values, and couldn't even feel identified with the successful brand name "John Fowles". Living down in Lyme Regis in Dorset, as an exile from metropolitan life, Fowles found consolation in the natural world. There are magnificent descriptions of owls, badgers, the sea and orchids (on a trip up to London, Fowles goes to Kew Gardens and finds one